What this is about…

This research was part of my senior thesis at UC Berkeley. The overlying questions is will smart city planning lead to behavioral change? The investigation looked at the policies put in place as early as 1963, that first protect our air quality, and briefly chronicled the subsequent 46 years of environmental policies established for the built environment. The case study identified San Francisco’s process of changing their building codes, and revealed that even with the best intentions, the City is still subject to the authority of an economic government embedded in financial markets and corporate greed. Economist, Adam Smith’s invisible hand holds our public institutions in its palm, as cities and their citizens wait to see when the market will right itself so that well planned social programs can be implemented.
The Green Building Ordinance and legislation like it, are formed by task forces in cities across the country. Initiatives on energy efficiency, transportation reform and walk-able communities recognize that investing in our energy infrastructure can solve many of our economic and social problems. The people resisting solutions, are often not people at all; they are the corporations, the capitalist, whose obligation is not to the public but to their shareholders. They are the overleveraged companies like General Growth, whose strategies looked more like a ponzi scheme than an investment in society.
There is certainly a lot of talk about the end of capitalism, but as long as the President speaks in terms of the market based economy the indistinguishable relationship between the State and the capitalist class will continue.